Now that the 3.3 DPS Specs are all but done, let’s talk a little about tanking. I was surprised that I pretty much like my tanking specs from 3.2, with the exception of Unholy. There’ve been some changes to Scourge Strike and some other abilities in Unholy, so it warrants a second look at the spec I picked out.

Blood
53/8/10

Blood hasn’t changed at all since I looked at it in 3.2. This spec provides strong regeneration and mitigation as well as nice utility talents in the top of the other two trees. I think Blood is a superior raid-boss tanking spec.

Perks
Health Regeneration via Imp Death Strike, Imp Blood Pres, and Vampiric Blood
Enhanced mitigation via added Stamina, Armor, and Parry
Hysteria and Might of Mograine raid buffs
Improved Runic Power generation

Frost
10/51/10

From my experience, Frost is the superior Aggro spec. Along with other abilities; you get stronger initial threat thanks to Howling Blast. I use Frost the most for Heroic tanking and on raid trash, due to its snap-aggro on the pull.

Perks
Improved Avoidance and Mitigation via Frigid Dreadplate and Unbreakable Armor
Improved AoE threat via Howling Blast and Morbidity

Unholy
13/8/50

This unholy spec focuses more on raid tanking. It drops talents for magic immunity because they’re pretty much useless in a raid situation. Unholy focuses more on AoE threat and avoidance. I’d imagine it would be great for trash tanking, but I think it falls short on aggro generation for raid bosses.

Perks
Superior AoE Threat via improved diseases and wandering\ebon plague
Improved Avoidance via Bone Shield

Frost DPS is my favorite spec, I guess I just like the style. It suits me.

Following Naxxramas, Blizzard pretty much killed Frost-based Dual-Wielding specs (and Unholy-Based Dual-Wielding specs). The problem was that these specs relied on Icy Touch spam to make ridiculously consistent Killing Machine procs. At the time, Killing Machine wasn’t really normalized, so the faster your weapons were, the more procs you could get, essentially buffing your crit percentages to insanely high numbers at the time.

In response to this, Blizzard nerfed Icy Touch, and some Sigils that took advantage of it. They also normalized Killing Machine to a procs-per-minute setup. The damage of Dual-Wielding specs was slaughtered, pushing most dps Death Knights to Unholy and Blood.

Popular demand forced Blizzard to redesign the Frost tree and make Dual-Wielding a viable option again. Nerves of Cold Steel, Threat of Thassarian, and changes to Obliterate were added to essential turn Frost into the Dual-Wielding tree. Frost is an iconic path for Death Knights in Wow Lore, while Dual-Wielding is a play-style that many players are drawn to. Part of it is rebellion against the norm and being different, part of it I believe is just personal preference.

The frost tree has always been more magic damage than melee. While Blood fills the melee-based roll, and Unholy is traditionally for AoE, Frost fills a spot in between. In a fight like Lady Deathwhisper a Death Knight can help kill those mobs that your Warriors, Paladins, or Hunters would be otherwise unable to kill effectively.

Strengths
* Frost excels at single-target damage, while still retaining competitive AoE damage via Howling Blast.
* Frost relies more heavily on magic damage than Blood.
* Frost provides raid utility in the form of Imp. Icy Talons, a haste buff similar to Windfury.
* Enhanced damage and survival via Unbreakable Armor.

Weaknesses
* Other classes can provide similar raid buffs.
* Weaker AoE damage performance.
* Weaker defensive capabilities, lacking the avoidance and mitigation of Blood or Unholy.
* At this time Blood or Unholy have a slight dps advantage.

Weapon Speed and Frost DPS

In previous incarnations, Dual-Wielding relied on Fast\Fast weapons or Slow\Fast weapons to achieve maximum dps. Since Killing Machine, one of Frost’s best procs is now based on procs per minute, slower weapon speeds are best. Get yourself a good 2.60 swords or axes (or maces if you’re a dorf) and you’ll achieve maximum dps. For best effect, you should use Fallen Crusader on your MH and Razorice on your OH.

Glyphs

Glyph of Icy Touch
Glyph of Obliterate
Glyph of Frost Strike

0/54/17 Rotation

Rotations for Frost are based on a priority system. Which will look kinda like this: Frost Strike (Killing Machine) > Diseases (IT, PS) > Howling Blast (if Rime and Killing Machine are up) > Obliterate > Blood Strike > Frost Strike. A priority system means that the priority queue is evaluated when deciding which ability to use; instead of following a set rotation. Please keep this in mind as you consider the rotation below.

General Frost rotations will look something like this.

Rotation 1
     Dump(  )

Rotation 2
    Dump(  )

NOTE: This ability list is prone to change based on your Killing Machine and Rime procs. For instance, when you have a Killing Machine and Rime proc, you should use Howling Blast. When you have a Killing Machine proc, you should use KM prior to hitting Icy Touch again. Also, I'm still trying to find some good stat weights for Frost.

Yesterday, we looked at an Unholy AoE DPS build. Today, we’re going to delve into Blood DPS. Blood is awesome because it’s old-school melee dps. This spec offers the highest theoretical Single-Target damage.

Strengths
At the moment, Unholy Single-Target specs appear to have a slight dps lead, but that is subject to change.
High Single-Target DPS – Highest possible theoretical single-target dps of all Death Knight builds.
Scales well with two or three targets
Raid Utility – Raid utility in the form of Abomination’s Might and Hysteria.
Improved Survivability – You gain improved survivability thanks to Improved Blood Presence, enhanced Death Strike, and Blood Worms.

Weaknesses
Raid buffs are duplicable; they aren’t specific to the Death Knight.
Works best with excellent connectivity, lag results in missed GCD’s and diseases can fall off
Weak AoE performance, Blood, at least this build, focuses more on Single-Target DPS.

A Note On DRW

Dancing Rune Weapon is your premium Runic Power Dump for Blood spec. Remember that DRW gains damage based on the buffs that you have at the time. You want to maximize your temporary buffs when using DRW. First, make sure that your diseases are up and at their peak duration. Secondly, make sure that Hysteria is up, and that you are ready to use your Trinkets. Most importantly, make sure that you are at maximum RP. Sometimes, you can’t coordinate all of these while keeping with your current rotation, or Hysteria may not be up because it has a longer cooldown, but try to meet as many of these conditions as you can to maximize your damage.

51/0/20 Rotation

Rotation 1
     Dump(   )

Rotation 2
     Dump(   )

Glyphs

Glyph of Dancing Rune Weapon
Glyph of Death Strike
Glyph of Dark Death

Stat Weights

For information on what these stat weights mean, please see my BiS post

Weapon DPS 9.89
Strength 2.89
Armor Penetration 2.75
Hit Rating (to cap) 2.51
Haste Rating 1.5
Expertise Rating 2.47
Crit Rating 1.56
Agility 1.37
Attack Power 1

Stat Weights via ElitistJerks

I tried out Unholy in ICC this past week. I was really impressed with the results. Keep in mind that my 2-hander is pretty crappy. Despite having the worst 2-hander in the guild, I was still very competitive on dps, hitting as high as #2 on bosses.

To raid, I chose a heavy AoE build which favors multi-targetting over single-target damage. I expected it to fare well on trash, but not so well on bosses. My previous DW-Frost build did exactly the opposite. My hope was that this spec would make me at least competitive with the consecrate-batteries on the trash packs.

You will notice that this build does not take Reaping, so you will not get Death Runes. At this point, especially with lower gear level (I don’t really have much from ICC) Reaping is not recommended.

Strengths
High, Sustained AoE Damage, the highest possible for a Death Knight, doesn’t rely on procs.
Raid Utility – Ebon Plague provides great raid utility and a nearly unduplicated raid buff.
Perma-Ghoul, Bone Shield – Enhanced survivability and damage

Weaknesses
This spec suffers some in Single-target dps. While competitive, it won’t get you the highest possible numbers because the spec is geared specifically toward AoE damage. It might be a good idea to set a decent single-target spec as your alternate spec.

17/0/54 Rotation

Multiple Target AoE – Opening Rotation ONLY
     

Rotation 1
    Dump(   )

Rotation 2
    

Single Target

Rotation 1
       

Rotation 2
    Dump(   )

Glyphs

Glyph of Disease
Glyph of Icy Touch
Glyph of Death and Decay

Stat Weights

Stat weights are how you compare the benefit of one stat over another for a given spec. Stat weights are different from spec to spec, so if you are not unholy, these stat weights will not apply to you and will be different for your spec. So after getting 8% melee hit (also called "Hit Capped") your best stats are Strength > Crit Rating > Armor Penetration. Strength has a stat weight of 3.02, while Armor Pen has a stat weight of 2.01. This means that Strength is just about 50% better for you, per point than Armor Pen. For a more detailed explanation of how to work with stat weights, please see my BiS (Best in Slot) post.

Please be aware that as you start getting more ICC gear especially Tier 10 Armor Pen starts to scale more than Crit Rating. Keep this in mind as you get better gear from Icecrown Citadel.

The current stat weights for Unholy are:


WeaponDPS: 6.67
MeleeHit (<8%): 3.62
Strength: 3.06
Crit Rating: 2.16
ArP Rating: 2.01
Haste Rating: 1.75
Expertise Rating: 1.63
Agility: 1.55
Attack Power: 1
Armor: 0.028

Stat Weights via ElitistJerks

I like to comment on original thinking. When I see a Death Knight that has a non-standard spec, I’m interested. Usually random Death Knights are using a spec that they’ve found on my site, or on the Elitist Jerks forums. When I see something totally different, I like to take the time to consider it.

This latest tidbit comes from Faine of Aerie Peak. In PvE, there aren’t many hybrid specs, but his spec is about as hybrid as you can get. He’s running with 24/8/39. It takes Blood down to VotTW and Unholy down to CF.

I’m trying to figure out this build’s rotation, and the relative benefits of splitting your points up to heavily between the two outer trees. I guess this gives you some versatility between magic and melee damage, and some regeneration via rune tap; and of course the ghoul; Bone Shield is nice too.

This build lacks either Death Rune Mastery or Reaping, so it’s not going to generate Death Runes. This limits the rotation possibilities. Seeing as it doesn’t have Scourge Strike, it’s going to be either Obliterate or Death Strike-based. He’s taken Glyph of Death Strike, so I’m guessing he tries to use Death Strike.

This build doesn’t take any of the raid buff or improvement talents in the lower end of the Blood tree, so it’s almost a waste to use Death Strike. He’s also forgone points in Necrosis and BCB, which will lower overall melee dps.

As advantages, I could maybe see this build as a decent OT \AoE build. It seems to balance between melee and spell-based dps. It has some avoidance; in the form of Bone Shield. It also benefits from perma-ghoul.

However, I think that this build is going to suffer in both dps and threat by not having Death Runes and because it doesn’t delve deeply enough into the bottom of any of the trees. I’d compare this to an Unholy DPS no-DR build, but even that uses SS for DPS and threat. It also lacks much if any raid utility.

This appears to be a versatile build; it has its benefits, and also its problems. Every build has its strengths and weaknesses. It may not be something that I’d consider using in a bleeding-edge raid, but I like to reward individual thinking, and choosing not to just pick the token build from your favorite Death Knight blog.

What do you all think about this spec? Do you think that independence is important in the Death Knight community? As always, send me comments via email or post a comment right here on the site using our new comment feature.

First order of business, been having some server issues. It’s makes things a bit difficult to get more people to the site when things don’t work. It’s Vmware’s fault, and I’m trying to get it settled. If you’ve had issues getting on; I’m sorry about that. If you haven’t, forget this first paragraph. I’m a one man show here, I designed the site, I host the site, and I write content; sometimes the gnomes tinker with my hardware.

First bit of news is a big “I told you so”. According to Blizz, rogues are getting nerfed. They expect a 7% damage decrease to Assassination and a 2% decrease to Combat. Taking into account the meters from ICC, I’m not surprised at all. Take away 7% of our rogue’s damage and she’s still ahead, but not by quite so much compared to everyone else. We have good people with about equivalent gear and skill, if someone’s THAT far ahead, something is wrong with the class. This is the same argument other people used against Death Knights back in Naxx. The buff nerf game is part of the class-mechanics merrygoround that the devs use to keep everyone interested; deal with it. As expected some wonderful people of the WoW community have taken the news waaaay too far. Check out this read from Ghostcrawler on the forums:

It's amazing how the raiding guilds of the world went from stacking rogues to sitting rogues in one night.

Most of the estimates I've seen on the forums is around a 7% nerf to Assassination and a 2% nerf to Combat. That sounds about right. If you're arguing your raid can't handle that or offset it in other ways, I'm a tiny bit skeptical.

I know it's not fun to get nerfed. Believe me. I hear about it. But the whole moral of the "sky is falling" deal is that when you exaggerate the impact of every change we make, then it makes for it hard for us and everyone else to distinguish between things that are really a big deal versus you just venting a little bit. If the sky is falling let us know that, but save it up for those episodes when it really is.

In your eagerness to find a gotcha I think you misinterpreted me. You guys (the community) theorycrafted the nerf to be about 7% for Mutilate. For you guys (the community) to then complain that it's a massive nerf that will cost you a raid spot seems disingenuous. Either you don't believe those estimates, in which case I advise you to address those players who made them, or you're just being melodramatic.

We know how much we wanted to lower rogue damage, but we typically don't share our numbers. What happens is if we said "Rogue target damage is 7.5K dps" then every time players did less than that or saw other classes do more, they'd try and argue that we need to make changes instead of them trying to do better.

- Ghostcrawler (Source)

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not trying to say that Rogues DESERVE to be nerfed, or that they shouldn’t be a little bit higher on the meters than a DK. What I am trying to say is that an equally geared and equally skilled rogue should not be topping the meters by as high of a margin as they are (or maybe were) currently. That turns into a class balance issue, and guilds start stacking rogues as they have stacked other classes in the past, and an overpowered class becomes a crutch.

As promised, I did a little comparison between blood and frost. These meters were taken on the same raid with the same raid members. I used my normal frost DW spec (0/53/18) and the top 2-hand blood dps spec (51/0/20). I think that the damage ended up being relatively the same. Blood scored a little less, but I chalk this up to less familiarity with the rotation. I was able to come up top on one of our attempts against Saurfang.

Blood	Frost	Frost

We killed Saurfang again, but we had to slightly modify our strategy. We had a hunter and a balance druid for ranged dps. We had the ranged, and one of our DK’s on permanent flesh duty, while myself, Kaali, and the rest of the melee dps focused totally on the boss. We were able to get to Frenzy just as Saurfang was using the first MoB. The strain on the healers was a lot less. Even though we had less overall dps, we still rolled the encounter. If we hadn’t made that change, we would have failed. So, if you’re raid is low dps-wise, you may want to consider a similar strategy.

That was it for the night unfortunately, we had some people bail before we could try the new wing, and then Yuriken and Kilios’ dad was rushed to the hospital, killing our raid night this week.

Got something you want me to talk about, feel free to drop me a line. Also, if you have a screen shot of someone being a Deathnoob, feel free to email it to me for our mutual amusement and their humiliation.

I’ve had some trouble lately working on content. Part of my problem is that I haven’t liked the way Blizzard has been jerking around our class over the last few patches. Also, my role in the game has changed a bit. My guild has been having issues motivating people to attend raids and we’ve lost a lot of people because there are WAY too many guilds out there trying to be raiding guilds, and not enough skilled players to fill them all; so recruitment has been in the crapper to fill our open spots.

My guild also saw the departure of Neo, one of our main tanks. He abandoned the guild for a new raiding guild that was basically a conglomeration of people left over from other raiding guilds that were having the same problem as ours. We lost a great player and a skilled\geared tank. So, I’ve been focusing on my tanking skills to try to replace him. Up until WOTLK, I was our guild’s MT, so I’ve done my fare share of tanking in the past.

3.2 is just about upon us. Like 3.1, this ushers in a new quasi-dungeon, The Argent Coliseum. It also brings a ton of changes to the Deathknight talent trees. This includes the official reintroduction of Dual Wielding. For your enlightenment; here is my 3.2 Spec Compendium.

Blood PvE

51/0/20 – Primary Blood PvE damage spec; utilizes full Necrosis and BCB.
51/2/18 – Puts talents into Runic Power Mastery for an increased RP pool.

Presence: Blood
Runeforge: Fallen Crusader
Major Glyphs: Deathstrike, Dark Death, Blood Strike

Rotation 1:      Dump(  )

Rotation 2:      Dump(  )

Unholy PvE

0/10/61 – Final Unholy DPS spec; assumes BiS gear.
7/10/54 – Moves points into blood, scales better with pre-Ulduar gear.

Presence: Blood
Runeforge: Fallen Crusader
Major Glyphs: Scourge Strike, Ghoul, Dark Death

Rotation 1:      Dump(  )

Rotation 2:    Dump(  )

*note: when diseases are up and refreshed, use in place of   for increased dps.

Frost DW PvE

0/53/18 – Primary Blood PvE damage spec; utilizes full Necrosis and BCB.

Presence: Blood
Runeforge: Fallen Crusader \ Razor Ice
Weapon Speed: Slow \ Slow Major Glyphs: Obliterate, Frost Strike, Blood Strike

Rotation 1:      Dump(  )

Rotation 2:    Dump(  )


--or--

Rotation 1:      Dump(  )

* note: replaces   once diseases have been applied.

Rotation 2:    Dump(  )

3.1 Has finally been released to the live realms. I don’t have time to make a spec post on all the available builds that I haven’t already hit. So here’s a little 3.1 Spec Compendium to get everyone started off. Here are your DPS Specs:

PvE Unholy (0/10/61)

Rotation 1:      Dump( -> )
Rotation 2:    Dump(  )

PvE Blood (51/2/18)

Rotation 1:      Dump( -> )
Rotation 2:     Dump(  )

Runner Ups

The changes to Frost which nerfed Duel-Wielding also hurt 2H Frost DPS, so it’s a little less viable than 2H Unholy and Blood; nevertheless here are a few specs to try out:

PvE Frost (17/51/3)

Rotation 1:      Dump( -> )
Rotation 2:    Dump(  )

PvE Duel-Wield Frost (0/51/20)

Rotation 1:      Dump(  )
Rotation 2:      Dump(  )

PvE Duel-Wield Unholy (0/17/54)

Rotation 1:        
Rotation 2:        

Which to choose? Unholy and Blood are situationally equivalent. That is Blood will do better under certain circumstances, while Unholy will do better in others. Frost comes in a close, yet separate third. Your raid isn’t going to boot you for being Frost, after all Frost brings some nice buffs if you lack shamans, but I think that an Unholy or Blood DK is going to outshine you in DPS. Following in a distance third at the Duel-Wield specs. I’d like to tell you that they’re equivalent; I am a big fan of duel-wielding, but at this time, that’s just not the case. Once again, you may point, snicker, and lolz any duel-wield DK’s that you meet while raiding. Recent posts hint Blizzard may revisit duel-wielding, but it wasn’t in time for 3.1, sorry.

Here is an updated Blood leveling build. I honestly think that either Blood or Unholy is good for leveling purposes. A blood leveling spec focuses on health regen and damage, while an unholy leveling spec focuses more on diseases and control via your undead minion.

There really isn't a good rotation for leveling, becasue you don't start out with all your abilities. So I'd just use a priority system. Start with Icy Touch and Plague Strike for diseases, through in some Heart Strike and Obliterate for damage, and use Death Strike for self-healing. Clicky the Death Coil button when your RP gets high.

Advantages

* Improved Health Generation\Regen via Imp Rune Tap, Vendetta, Blood Worms, Vampiric Blood, etc.

* Abomination's Might Group\Raid Buff increases AP by 10%.

* Improved Disease Duration and Auto Attack Damage via supporting Unholy talents.

Level 0 - 55

Blood (56)

Butchery 2/2 - Put two points in Butchery. I’m not a fan of talents that do things based on killing enemies that yield experience. In this case, we have to pick two of the top three Tier 1 talents. Blade Barrier doesn’t help our dps, so we’ll go with Butchery. In addition to the on-kill component, it generates 2 RP per 5 seconds; while in combat.

Subversion 3/3 - Put 3 points in Subversion; it increases the critical strike chance of your main strike abilities by 3%/6%/9%, in addition to reducing your threat by 25% while in either DPS presence.

Bladed Armory 5/5 - Bladed armor is a token Armor to AP conversion talent. This talent increases your AP by 1/2/3/4/5 points for every 180 Armor your character has. With an average armor of 20,000, you’ll be gaining over 550 AP from this talent.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization 2/2 - This talent increases physical damage dealt by two-handed weapons by 2%/4%. This is a pretty standard DPS talent for most builds that include blood points.

Rune Tap 1/1 - This ability on-demand converts one of your blood runes to 10% of your maximum health.

Dark Conviction 5/5 - This talent increases critical strike chance by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5%. This includes Abilities, Spells, and Weapons.

Death Rune Mastery 3/3 - Each talent tree has a talent similar to this. When you use this spec’s standard strike ability, it converts one of the runes used into a Death Rune when it regenerates. In this case, this talent gives a 100% chance that a frost or unholy rune used by Obliterate will regenerate as a Death Rune.

Improved Rune Tap 3/3 - This talent improves Rune Tap, it increases health gained through the effect by 33%\66%\100%, and decreases its cooldown by 10 sec.\20 sec. \30 seconds.

Vendetta 3/3 - Vendetta heals you for 3%/4%/6% of your maximum health whenever you kill a target that yields honor\experience. This is pretty muc ha useless talent for raiding, but great for soloing\leveling.

Bloody Strikes 3/3 - This talent increases the damage of Blood and Heart Strike by 15%/30%/45% and also increases the bonus damage gained from your diseases by 10%/20%/30%. This is a token talent for deep blood builds.

Veteran of the Third War 3/3 - This talent increases your total Strength and Stamina by 2%/4%/6%, It also improved your Expertise Rating by 2/4/6.

Bloody Vengeance 3/3 - When you get a critical strike from a weapon swing, a spell, or an ability; you receive a 1%/2%/3% bonus to your physical damage for 30 Seconds. This talent can stack up to 3 times. This ability would obviously proc more with higher critical strike chance. So choosing items with high crit would be ideal.

Abomination's Might 2/2 - This talent is essential if you are a raider. This is the main raid-support talent of Deep Blood. It gives your Blood Strike and Heart Strike a 25%/50% chance and your Obliterate a 50%/100% chance to increase the Attack Power of all raid members within 45 yards by 10% and increase your total strength by 1%/2%. That’s a lot of formula talk, basically what this means is that your raid will thank you.

Blood Worms 3/3 - Your weapon hits have a 9% chance to spawn 2-4 Blood Worms. They're kinda like pets and you are healed by the damage they deal for 20 seconds or until they die. Add this to your formiable health regen, or combine it with other abilities like Vampiric Blood.

Heart Strike 1/1 - This talent is the standard Blood strike ability. In replaces Blood Strike in your DPS rotation. Heart Strike is an instant attack that causes 50% Weapon Damage + 368, with a bonus of 10% damage per disease. Unlike other high-tier strikes, Heart Strike consumes only 1 Blood Rune (Scourge Strike and Oblit consume 2 runes each). This ability is a staple in Blood DPS Rotations, if you are deep Blood, you’d be stupid not to take it.

Vampiric Blood 1/1 - When used, this ability grants the Death Knight 15% of his maximum health, and also increases the amount of health generated through spells and abilities by 35% per second. When the effect fades, the gained health is lost.

Level 56 - 70

Might of Mograine 3/3 - This talent increases the critical strike damage bonus of Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Death Strike, and Obliterate by 15%/30%/45%.

Sudden Doom 3/3 - This talent gives a 5%/10%/15% that your Blood Strike or Heart Strike will cause you to launch a free Death Coil.

Improved Death Strike 2/2 - This talent increases the damage of your Death STrike by 10%/20%/30% and improves its critical strike chance by 2%/4%/6%. Extra Death Strike damage converts into more health regen for you.

Blood Gorged 5/5 - This talent gives a you a blanket dps buff when you’re above 75%. It increases all damage by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%, and also increases expertise by 1/2/3/4/5.

Unholy (15)

Vicious Strikes 2/2 - This talent increases the critical strike chance of your Plague Strike by 3%/6%, and increases its critical strike damage bonus by 15%/30%.

Virulence 3/3 - Put your next three points into virulence. This gives you a 1%/2%/3% chance to hit with your spells. Especially while duel-wielding, extra hit is key to improving your damage. Do not pass this talent up.

Level 71 - 80

Epidemic 2/2 - Epidemic increases disease uptime and allows for more complex ability rotations. Epidemic increases disease duration by 3 sec. \ 6 sec.

Ravenous Dead 3/3 - This talent increases your total strength by 1%/2%/3% as well as increasing the contribution your ghoul receives from your strength and stamina by 20%/40%/60%.

Necrosis 5/5 - This is one of the key abilities in the early Unholy tree. It improves auto-attack damage by 4%/8%/12%/16%/20%.

Patch 3.1 brings a lot of buffs and improvements to Unholy. Many would conclude that Blizzard has gone out of their way to make Unholy as the favored DPS spec for Ulduar. This Unholy spec has proved to be the best possible spec for DPS. It is the first competitive dps spec to delve this deeply into any one tree; with only 10 points spent in a support tree.

This spec relies heavily on disease uptime and minion dps. This spec utilizes both Master of Ghouls and Gargoyle as a burst dps increase. We’ve also taken Ebon Plaguebringer, Wandering Plague, and Unholy blight for improved AoE performance.

Some Frost talents are taken to improve dps. These talents provide for improved Icy Touch, and for overall damage increase. Black Ice is now very attractive because in addition to frost, it also improves shadow damage.

PvE Unholy (0/10/61) on Wowhead.com

Advantages

* Permanent Ghoul – The ghoul is a controllable pet, controllable by the caster; Army of the Dead provides increased survivability.

* Epidemic provides increased disease uptime.

* Ebon Plaguebringer\Crypt Fever combined with Wandering Plague and Unholy Blight provide increased disease damage and disease coverage.

* The gargoyle gives you impressive burst damage.

Unholy (61)

Vicious Strikes 2/2 - Put your first two points into Vicious Strikes, increasing the critical strike chance of Plague Strike by 3%/6% and increasing the critical strike damage bonus by 15%/30%.

Virulence 3/3 - Put your next three points into virulence. This gives you a 1%/2%/3% chance to hit with your spells. Especially while duel-wielding, extra hit is key to improving your damage. Do not pass this talent up.

Epidemic 2/2 – Epidemic increases disease uptime and allows for more complex ability rotations. Epidemic increases disease duration by 3 sec. \ 6 sec.

Morbidity 2/3 – put only 2 points into morbidity. We’re putting them here so that we can unlock higher tier talents later. This provides some dps increase, but that last point is better spent elsewhere.

Ravenous Dead 3/3 - This talent increases your total strength by 1%/2%/3% as well as increasing the contribution your ghoul receives from your strength and stamina by 20%/40%/60%.

Outbreak 3/3 - Increases the damage of Plague Strike by 10%/20%/30% and Scourge Strike by 7%/13%/20%.

Necrosis 5/5 - This is one of the key abilities in the early Unholy tree. It improves auto-attack damage by 4%/8%/12%/16%/20%. Remember, we’re duel-wielding, that means both more auto attacks, and a higher miss rate, so improving on the damage that actually lands is key.

Blood-Caked Blade 3/3 - This talent gives your auto-attacks a 10%/20%/30% chance to trigger the Blood-Caked Blade effect which deals additional damage of 25% weapon damage plus 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target. It’s a key damage component of this spec.

Master of Ghouls 1/1 - Put your final talent point into Master of Ghouls. Your Ghoul provides a huge damage boost. By taking this talent, he no longer has a duration and is completely under your control, like a hunter or warlock pet.

Unholy Blight 1/1 – Unholy Blight adds to Death Coil as a Runic Power Dump. It provides improved AoE damage by dealing shadow damage to all enemies within 10 yards of you.

Impurity 5/5 – Put the next 5 points into Impurity, this increases the attack power contribution your spells get by an additional 4%/8%/12%/16%/20%.

Dirge 2/2 – This talent increases the runic power generated by your Death Strike, Oblit, Plague Strike, and Scourge Strike by an additional 2.5\5. Add this to your improved runic power cap, and you can generate more rp faster. This especially comes in handy when you want to summon your ghoul in conjunction with a Mirror of Truth proc.

Reaping 3/3 – This talent causes your used blood runes (via Blood Strike or Pest) to regenerate as Death Runes. If you’re going to put one point here, you may as well put them all here.

Desecration 5/5 – This talent is every tank’s worst nightmare on Grobulus. Many tanks hate the graphic. The trade off for this ability is that it becomes rather intermittent during high-mobility fights, but it is a decent dps increases. Please not that the talent has changed. Extra points now effect magnitude, but not the chance that the effect will proc.

Improved Unholy Presence 2/2 – This talent has also changed for 3.1. It no longer applies a raid wide effect. The Devs were concerned about having to create encounters that assumed the raid had this effect. Now, it will only affect you, and it will allow you to keep the movement speed bonus in other presences, as well as improves your rune cooldown time. Previously, Haste was a crappy stat for DK’s because as your GCD decreased, your rotations would get screwed up because runes still had a fixed regeneration rate. Unholy Presence now improves this by modifying rune refresh time, making haste a much more beneficial stat (not that there’s a truckload of haste of the Tier 8 gear).

Night of the Dead 2/2 – Night of the dead decreases Raise Dead by 45 sec. \ 90 sec. and also reduces AoE damage to your ghoul by 40%/70%. This talent gives your Ghoul a heck of a lot more survivability in boss encounters as well as allows you to summon him more often. The Ghoul is a big part of your dps, so safe guarding that investment is a good plan.

Bone Shield 1/1 – Bone Shield is more than just a tanking ability, it provides a 2% damage bonus to all spells and abilities.

Crypt Fever 3/3 – Diseases inflicted upon a target now cause Crypt Fever, which increases disease damage taken by that target by 10%/20%/30%. Please note that Crypt Fever is limited by the same rules as Ebon Plaguebringer, in that only 1 DK at a time can have both Crypt Fever and Ebon Plaguebringer up at a time.

Ebon Plaguebringer 3/3 – Your Crypt Fever instead becomes Ebon Plaguebringer. In addition to the disease damage bonus, your target now takes 5%/9%/13% more magic damage as well as improving critical strike chance with weapons and spells by 1%/2%/3%. Please note that the Ebon Plaguebringer bug still exists even though Blizzard is pushing all dps DK’s into Unholy. Only a single DK can have Ebon Plaguebringer and\or Crypt Fever up at one time. Other DK’s can’t use it and don’t gain the disease bonus to damage from it. It’s wise to only include a single Unholy DK in your raid.

Scourge Strike 1/1 – Scourge Strike is the iconic Strike Ability of the Unholy tree. It will be one of your most useful attacks. It deals 45% of weapon damage plus an additional 11% for each disease that you have up, so disease uptime is key to Scourge Strike’s abilities. Time your attacks well.

Wandering Plague 3/3 – You have a chance equal to your critical strike chance to inflict 33%/66%/100% additional damage to your enemy and all enemies within 8 yrds.

Rage of Rivendare 5/5 – This talent is named after Baron Rivendare, a classical Death Knight. It is the token improved damage talent for the Unholy spec. IT causes your causes targets inflicted by Blood Plague to take 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% additional damage, and also increases your expertise rating by 1/2/3/4/5.

Gargoyle 1/1 – The gargoyle is a Runic Power Dump. It provides excellent burst dps, especially when used in conjunction with trinket procs. It’s substantial dps is worth taking.

Frost (10)

Improved Icy Touch 3/3 - Put your first three points into Improved Icy Touch. This will increase the damage of your Icy Touch ability by 5%/10%/15%.

Runic Power Mastery 2/2 - Put your next two points into Runic Power Mastery; this increases your total runic power by 30. This spec utilizes many varying attacks, so having enough room for the rp without going over is key.

Black Ice 5/5 - This ability has been unnerfed. It once again applies to both Frost and Shadow damage, increasing it by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%. This change makes it slightly better, per-point, than it used to be. Since it affects shadow damage, it’s worthwhile for an Unholy spec. Take all five.

Rotation 1:      (Dump: ->->)
Rotation 2:    (Dump: ->->)

So far, this spec is proving to be top DK dps. This is probably going to be the first raiding spec I’m going to check out in Ulduar.

The goal of this spec is to find the best spec for duel-wielding. Duel-wielding has emerged, mostly from the theory crafting community as the premier raid spec up to 3.1. It was spec that was created and perfected by the Death Knight community and was unforeseen by the class developers at Blizzard. Since about 3.0.8, they’ve stated their intentions to undermine Duel-wielding as the primary raid spec with several stated objectives; 1. The spec is not condoned by the Blizzard developers, 2. The spec was extremely popular with veteran raiders, and thus endangered the dps balance among the classes. 3. They felt that, even though they were the ones who gave DK’s the ability to Duel-wield, that it was against the class mythos for it to be our primary dps style.

This talent build is designed to maximize your dps while Duel-Wielding. The fact of the matter is, this spec will not come out on top when compared against a two-hand unholy build; but it provides the maximum dps and flexibility for duel-wielding. It is as close as possible, given the updated trees, to the old 0/33/38 build.

PvE Duel-Wield (0/51/20) on wowhead.com

Advantages

Frost (51 Points)

This spec devotes a full 51 points into the frost tree; which includes the 51-point talent Howling Blast. Much of this spec’s damage derives from Frost-based spell attacks, talents taken here are at improve over-all frost performance.

Improved Icy Touch 3/3 – put your first three points into Improved Icy Touch. This will increase the damage of your Icy Touch ability by 5%/10%/15%.

Runic Power Mastery 2/2 – Put your next two points into Runic Power Mastery; this increases your total runic power by 30. This spec utilizes many varying attacks, so having enough room for the rp without going over is key.

Black Ice 5/5 – This ability has been unnerfed. It once again applies to both Frost and Shadow damage, increasing it by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%. This change makes it slightly better, per-point, than it used to be. Take all five.

Nerves of Cold Steel 3/3 – This is arguably the only DK talent that is meant to benefit duel-wield over 2-hand. It applies a 1%/2%/3% chance to hit with one-handed weapons, and provides a 5%/10%/15% damage bonus to your offhand weapon.

Icy Talons 5/5 – This ability provides you with a 4%/8%/12%/16%/20% melee attack speed bonus. It provides the same effect as windfury; making it cool if you don’t have a shaman and “meh” if you do.

Killing Machine 5/5 – Killing Machine is one of the most modified abilities in this tree. It has gone from a mandatory DW talent to an equal or better benefit to 2-handers. It was changed from a percentage-based proc to a “proc-per-minute” style to combat what Blizzard calls “IT Spam Builds” that relied on two fast one-hand weapons to maximize KM uptime. Right now, its still a good talent, just nowhere near what it once was.

Deathchill 1/1 – Deathchill is a decent talent. It can be popped for a free crit IT, HB, FS, or Blit. I usually use it for HB when KM is not up.

Glacier Rot 3/3 – Diseased targets take 7%/13%/20% more damage from Icy Touch, Howling Blast, and Frost Strike. This is a good talent, but the downside is that it requires you to be more vigilant about diseases if you’re going to use it to its maximum extent.

Rime 3/3 – This talent increases your chance to crit with IT and Oblit by 5%/10%/15% and gives a 5%/10%/15% chance for your next Howling Blast to not consume runes. Traditionally rime procs have been cancel aura’d because they interrupt ability rotations, but some specs are ok with it, that part is up to you.

Merciless Combat 2/2 – IT, HB, and Oblit do 6%/12% more damage to targets that are under 35% health. Many classes have abilities like this (i.e.e execute range, hammer of wrath range, etc.).This ability will be used often and it does come with a damage increase as well, so I suggest taking it.

Improved Icy Talons 1/1 – This talent applies your IcyTalons buff raid-wide, as well as giving you an additional 5% melee haste bonus. For PvE, there’s no point passing this up if you already have a point in Icy Talons.

At this point, you have 2 extra points to spend before you can open up Blood of the North. All of the next tier of talents are either PvP or Tanking talents. My suggestion is either put those points into Icy Reach to extend your range, or into Improved Frost Presence to give you a slight Health boost, which could come in handy on a new-content fight.

Blood of the North 5/5 – This ability increases your Blood Strike and Frost Strike damage by 3%/6%/9%/12%/15%. It also allows your Blood Runes to regenerate as Death Runes.

Frost Strike 1/1 – Frost strike is an ability that converts runic power into damage. It will be used instead of Death Coil as your primary RP Dump. With all the enhancements in the Frost Tree, it is now more attractive than DC.

Guile of Gorefiend 3/3 – Put three points into GoG. This talent increases the critical strike damage bonus of Blood Strike, Frost Strike, Howling Blast, and Obliterate by 15%/30%/45%.

Unbreakable Armor 1/1 – We need to unlock Tundra Stalker, the best bet would be to put a point into Unbreakable Armor, which gives you a new on-click cooldown. This ability gives you a 25% strength bonus for 20 seconds.

Tundra Stalker 5/5 – Each tree has a token increase damage talent. For Frost, it is Tundra Stalker. This talent increases damage done to targets infected by Frost Fever across the board by 3%/6%/9%/12%/15%. It also grants 1/2/3/4/5 expertise.

Howling Blast 1/1 – put your fifty-first talent point into Howling Blast, finishing off the Frost tree. Howling Blast is a devastating AoE ability. It deals extra damage to targets inflicted with Frost Fever.

Unholy (20 Points)

Unholy is our supporting tree. It provides some ability buffs, but we’re mostly concerned with Master of Ghouls.

Vicious Strikes 2/2 – Put your first two points into Vicious Strikes, increasing the critical strike chance of Plague Strike by 3%/6% and increasing the critical strike damage bonus by 15%/30%.

Virulence 3/3 – Put your next three points into virulence. This gives you a 1%/2%/3% chance to hit with your spells. Especially while duel-wielding, extra hit is key to improving your damage. Do not pass this talent up.

Ravenous Dead 3/3 – This talent increases your total strength by 1%/2%/3% as well as increasing the contribution your ghoul receives from your strength and stamina by 20%/40%/60%.

Morbidity 3/3 – Put your next three points into Morbidity. It used to be a tier-1 talent, but was moved down to make room for Virulence, which the Devs felt should be open to more specs than it was previously. Morbidity improves the damage and healing of your Death Coil by 5%/10%/15%, as well as reducing the cooldown on your Death and Decay by the same amount.

Necrosis 5/5 – This is one of the key abilities in the early Unholy tree. It improves auto-attack damage by 4%/8%/12%/16%/20%. Remember, we’re duel-wielding, that means both more auto attacks, and a higher miss rate, so improving on the damage that actually lands is key.

Blood-Caked Blade 3/3 – This talent gives your auto-attacks a 10%/20%/30% chance to trigger the Blood-Caked Blade effect which deals additional damage of 25% weapon damage plus 12.5% for each of your diseases on the target. It’s a key damage component of this spec.

Master of Ghouls 1/1 – Put your final talent point into Master of Ghouls. Your Ghoul provides a huge damage boost. By taking this talent, he no longer has a duration and is completely under your control, like a hunter or warlock pet.

Rotation 1:       Dump
Rotation 2:       Dump

This is the best duel-wield spec at the moment. Please keep in mind that these talents are from the PTR, which is under constant revision. The numbers listed in this post are mostly for preview only and are subject to change until the patch actually goes live. Don’t come complaining to me if the numbers in the next patch don’t match up. Stay tuned next for the new top dps spec on the block, PvE Unholy; the “Omg we still having fixed the damned ebon plaguebringer” edition.

Unholy\Frost Duel-Wield is a very close second right now in end-game raiding DPS; post-patch 3.08. It was so popular that Blizzard felt the need to re-evaluate the talents which give it its power; like Killing Machine. Even after the most recent patch, this build continues to be a dominant force in Death Knight Raiding; it’s also my current PvE DPS build of choice.

Post-Patch 3.08, this build has two official variants which are with and without Crypt Fever. This recent patch made the same rules that apply to Ebon Plaguebringer also apply to Crypt Fever. So, if you have another deep Unholy DK in the raid, their EP or CF will override yours. There can only be on EP or CF on a single target at one time. In the situation where there are more than one Unholy DK, some duel-wielders have been moving those three points to Deathchill and Army of the Dead.

Here are the perks of 0/32/39:

Frost

Improved Icy Touch 3/3 – Put your first three points into Improved Icy Touch. Icy Touch is a staple of your dps rotation. This will be the button you are pressing the most. Icy Touch will be about 20% of your total damage. This talent increases its damage by 10%/20%/30% and your Frost Fever will reduce your opponent’s speed by 2%/4%/6%.

Glacial Rot 2/2 – This talent causes diseased opponents to take 5%/10% more damage from Icy Touch and Howling Blast. Those two are your best attacks, so taking this talent is mandatory; plus, you need those two points to open the next tier of talents.

Nerves of Cold Steel 3/3 – This talent is essential for duel wielding, it’s really not used in any other build. It increases your chance to hit with one-handed weapons by 1%/2%/3% and increases the damage of your offhand weapon by 5%/10%/15%. Not a huge increase; but it is necessary.

Black Ice 5/5 – Put five points in Black Ice. It increases Frost Damage by 6%/12%/18%/24%/30%. We’re frost, so we’ll take it. It used to be a bit better, but was nerfed in the past. The bonus used to apply to both shadow and frost damage.

Icy Talons 5/5 – This talent takes 4%/8%/12%/16%/20% attack speed from your opponent, and gives it to you for 20 seconds. In raid situations, this effect almost always stays up while in combat. It’s an awesome talent, especially if you don’t have a shaman that uses windfury, which gives pretty much the same effect.

Killing Machine 5/5 – This talent is the bread and butter of DW specs. Prior to patch 3.08, this talent gave a random chance to proc based on the critical strike chance of either of your weapons. Most DW DK’s used fast weapons and stacked crit for maximum uptime of this talent. When activated, it made the next Icy Touch, Howling Blast, or Frost Strike a guaranteed critical strike. This led to like a 40-50% critical strike output for the average raider. Since the patch, this talent was changed to be a proc per-minute per-point for your main weapon. It’s not AS good as it was, but it still allows you to have a high-20% crit output. Definitely put 5 points into it.

Chill of the Grave 2/2 – Put two points into this talent to allow your Icy Touch, Howling Blast, Obliterate, and Chains of Ice to generate an additional 2.5/5 runic power when used. This talent is nice because it provide more runic power to use for Death Coil, and also allows you to be ready to hit your gargoyle when mirror procs.

Improved Icy Talons 1/1 – This talent provides the raid-wide version of the Icy Talons buff, as well as increases the affect on you by an additional 5%; take it.

Rime 3/3 – Put three points into Rime. It increases the critical strike chance of Icy Touch by 5%/10%/15% as well as gives it a 5%/10%/15% chance to make your next Howling Blast not consume a rune when used (the Freezing Fog buff).

Merciless Combat 2/2 – This talent gives your Icy Touch and Howling Blast an additional 6%/12% damage when your target is below 35% health; decent for PvE; awesome for PvP.

Howling Blast 1/1 – Put your final frost point into Howling Blast. HB is a high-damage AoE ability. During your rotation’s you’ll want to save your Killing Machine procs for this attack; to maximize its damage potential. It accounts for about 17% of your total damage. The talent rime also gives it a high chance of not costing anything to use.

Unholy

Vicious Strikes 2/2 – Put your first two points into this talent to increase the critical strike chance of Plague Strike by 3%/6% and the critical strike damage bonus by 15%/30%.

Mobidity 3/3 – This talent increases the damage of your death coil by 5%/10%/15% as well as reducing the cooldown of Death and Decay by 5sec/10sec/15sec. This talent is a 0.69% dps increase per point.

Ravenous Dead 3/3 - This talent increase your strength by 2%/4%/6% and increases the contribution your ghoul gets by 20%/40%/60%. We’re taking the perma-ghoul talent a bit further down, so it’s stupid not to take this talent too since it increases your ghoul’s dps.

Necrosis 5/5 – Put five points into necrosis to deal 4%/8%/12%/16%/20% extra shadow damage on each auto attack. As Duel Wield, your auto attacks are a little more important than Unholy, so we’re going to put a full five points into this talent. Melee attacks end up account for 27% of your dps.

Blood-Caked Blade 3/3 – This is also a pretty big talent. It gives your auto attacks a 10%/20%/30% chance to cause an additional Blood-Caked Strike, which hits for 25% weapon damage; plus 12.5% additional for each of your diseases. It should account for about 7% of your DPS.

Shadow of Death 1/1 – This talent increases your total Str and Stam by 2% and allows you to resurrect as a ghoul when you die. I think this talent is totally annoying, and it just got a big time nerf; however it is necessary to unlock Master of Ghouls.

Virulence 3/3 – This increases spell hit by 1%/2%/3%, and reduces the chance that your DoT diseases will be dispelled by 10%/20%/30%.

Summon Gargoyle 1/1 – Unfortunately, the gargoyle isn’t the beast it once was, Blizzard ripped out his fangs in the last patch, reducing the damage output of this ability by 60%. They nerfed its damage and cut its uptime in half. It is still a decent RP dump though, so I still recommend taking it.

Impurity 5/5 – Put five points in impurity, this gives your spells an additional 5%/10%/15%/20%/25% damage bonus from your AP. Depending on your gear, this is about a 1% dps increase per point.

Reaping 3/3 – This is the token frost talent that changes your blood runes into death runes when you use blood strike. At 3 points, you receive a 100% chance on using Blood Strike for the Blood Rune used to be converted into a death rune when it refreshes. This gives you the ability to add more Icy Touches in the second half of your rotation.

Master of Ghouls – who doesn’t want to be a master of ghouls, it just sounds so cool. This talent takes your ghoul a permanent pet, answerable to your every command. It takes away the time limit, and allows you to command it as if it were a pet. This talent is also modified by Army of the Dead, which reduces the cooldown on Summon Ghoul.

Desecration 5/5 – This talent gives a 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% chance per Scourge Strike to cause the desecrated ground effect. This condition slows enemies by 50%, and while you stand inside it, you deal 5% extra damage. Its effectiveness is very situational. It’s not as useful on a fight like Grobbulus where there’s a lot of movement; but it’s great on low movement fights and trash. Additionally, some tanks get annoyed by the graphic. There really isn’t a better place to put these points, so I suggest putting all five here.

Crypt Fever 3/3 – Put the next three points in Crypt Fever, this talent adds an extra disease to your arsenal. When you disease an opponent, it also causes the Crypt Fever disease which increases disease damage taken by that target by 10%/20%/30%. On its own, this is a great talent; however it will NOT stack if you have another Unholy DK with either Ebon Plaguebringer or Crypt Fever. In that case, I would use the alternate spec.

Bone Shield 1/1 – Put your last point into Bone Shield. It is essentially a tanking talent, but it gives you extra mitigation in case you pull aggro, as well as a flat 2% damage increase. Given the alternatives, and the lack of aggro reducing talents in this build, I highly suggest taking it.

This spec relies heavily on weapon swings (Killing Machine is now an on-hit proc instead of an on critical strike proc), as well as spell damage attacks that don’t rely on weapon damage (Icy Touch and Howling Blast don’t rely on weapon damage). It follows a simple DPS rotation. I kinda do a mix of a rotation and a priority-based attack cycle. I try to hit Howling Blast whenever Killing Machine is up, instead of potentially using KM with Icy Touch. The basic DPS rotation is:

Rotation 1:      RP Dump ( )
Rotation 2:      RP Dump ( )

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Here are the wowhead links for these builds

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PvE Duel-Wield Unholy\Frost (0/32/39) w/ Crypt Fever
PvE Duel-Wield Unholy\Forst (0/33/38) w/o Crypt Fever

Unholy is the super-uber end-all be-all of Melee Death Knights right? The answer to that question is yes; but no. There are a lot of reasons to choose either spec, and there really is little practical difference between them that I’ve seen. While I really like 17/0/54, there are also some nice benefits to going blood.

Another good reason to consider this spec, or any other non-Unholy spec is because if there happens to be more than one Unholy Death Knight in your raid group, you’re screwing each other’s damage potential. As is; Ebon Plaguebringer is NOT STACKABLE. This means that you will be constantly knocking off each other’s Ebon Plaguebringer. This will result in most likely reduced damage potential for both of you because you will periodically lose your third disease as well as the bonuses that it provides to your Strike abilities.

Blood

Butchery 2/2 – Put two points in Butchery. I’m not a fan of talents that do things based on killing enemies that yield experience. In this case, we have to pick two of the top three Tier 1 talents. Blade Barrier doesn’t help our dps, so we’ll go with Butchery. In addition to the on-kill component, it generates 2 RP per 5 seconds; while in combat.

Subversion 3/3 – Put 3 points in Subversion; it increases the critical strike chance of your main strike abilities by 3%/6%/9%, in addition to reducing your threat by 25% while in either DPS presence.

Bladed Armor 5/5 – Bladed armor is a token Armor to AP conversion talent. This talent increases your AP by 1/2/3/4/5 points for every 180 Armor your character has. With an average armor of 20,000, you’ll be gaining over 550 AP from this talent; that’s a 5.3% DPS gain.

Two-Handed Weapon Specialization 2/2 – This talent increases physical damage dealt by two-handed weapons by 2%/4%. This is a pretty standard DPS talent for most builds that include blood points. Taking two points is a DPS increase of 2%.

Dark Conviction 5/5 – This talent increases critical strike chance by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5%. This includes Abilities, Spells, and Weapons.

Death Rune Mastery 3/3 – Each talent tree has a talent similar to this. When you use this spec’s standard strike ability, it converts one of the runes used into a Death Rune when it regenerates. In this case, this talent gives a 100% chance that a frost or unholy rune used by Obliterate will regenerate as a Death Rune.

Bloody Strike 3/3 – This talent increases the damage of Blood and Heart Strike by 10%/20%/30% and also increases the bonus damage gained from your diseases by 20%/40%/60%. This is a token talent for deep blood builds, It grants a 7.6% DPS increase.

Veteran of the Third War 3/3 – This talent increases your total Strength and Stamina by 2%/4%/6%, It also improved your Expertise Rating by 2/4/6; it’s about a 2% DPS increase.

Mark of Blood 1/1 – This talent gives you an ability that puts a mark on your target. Whenever your target deals damage to a target, that target gains health equal to 4% of their maximum. While not specifically altering your DPS, there are many solo situations where this could come in handy. I’ve also had my tanks call for it when they’re taking a lot of damage and their cooldowns aren’t up yet. If I were you, I’d grab it.

Bloody Vengeance 3/3 – When you get a critical strike from a weapon swing, a spell, or an ability; you receive a 1%/2%/3% bonus to your physical damage for 30 Seconds. This talent can stack up to 3 times. This ability would obviously proc more with higher critical strike chance. So choosing items with high crit would be ideal.

Abomination’s Might 2/2 – This talent is essential if you are a raider. This is the main raid-support talent of Deep Blood. It gives your Blood Strike and Heart Strike a 25%/50% chance and your Obliterate a 50%/100% chance to increase the Attack Power of all raid members within 45 yards by 10% and increase your total strength by 1%/2%. That’s a lot of formula talk, basically what this means is that your raid will thank you; and it will increase your dps by around 5.4%.

Hysteria 1/1 – Place your next point in Hysteria. This ability places a Frenzy effect on any friendly target (including you). The buff increases the target’s physical damage by 20% at the cost of 1% of their maximum health per second. I’m pretty much the top DPS in my guild, so I always use this on myself, you may choose to use it on another persona if you’re not as buff as me.

Blood Aura 2/2 – Out of all the auras, this is the one you’ll see the most. Unlike a Paladin aura, Blood Aura is always on and does not need to be activated every time you die (thank the makers). The other difference with DK Auras is that Blood Aura is NOT dependent on the presence you are currently using. If you are in frost Presence and tanking, you’ll still have Blood Aura up. Blood Aura grants health equal to 1%/2% of the damage that raid members within 45 yards deal.

Sudden Doom 5/5 – your Blood\Heart Strike has a 4%/8%/12%/16%/20% to cause your next Death Coil to critically hit and cost no RP. How awesome is that; this talents gives you a 20% of a free Death Coil, a 3.6% DPS increase.

Heart Strike 1/1 – This talent is the standard Blood strike ability. In replaces Blood Strike in your DPS rotation. Heart Strike is an instant attack that causes 60% Weapon Damage + 220.8, with a bonus of 110.4 damage per disease. Unlike other high-tier strikes, Heart Strike consumes only 1 Blood Rune (Scourge Strike and Oblit consume 2 runes each). This ability is a staple in Blood DPS Rotations, if you are deep Blood, you’d be stupid not to take it.

Might of Mograine 3/3 – This talent increases the critical strike damage bonus of Blood Boil, Blood Strike, Heart Strike, Death Strike, and Obliterate by 15%/30%/45%. Taking all three points gives you a 3.33% dps boost.

Bloodworms 1/3 – The next talent point is up to you, you need one more point to unlock Blood Gorged. None of the choices will really boost your DPS, the available options are either PvP talents, Health Regen talents, or Tanking talents. Most published builds take Rune Tap; but in practical application, every time I want to click this button, I’m down so much health that it’s not going to make a difference. I’m an expert raider and rarely get myself into trouble. If I’m going to die, this isn’t going to save me, so I choose to spent the point in Bloodworms instead.

Blood Gorged 5/5 – This talent gives a you a blanket dps buff when you’re above 75%. It increases all damage by 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%, and also increases expertise by 1/2/3/4/5. This talent is roughly a 9% dps boose overall and should not be passed up.

Dancing Rune Weapon – If you’ve come this far in the talent spec, your next choice is Dancing Rune Weapon, the 51 point Blood Talent. This ability is considered an RP Dump, that is; all your abilities, with the exception of Death Coil, and some of the Frost Tree strike abilities, all your attacks generate runic power abilities like DRW are used to dump that RP when you max it out. The other characteristic of RP Dump abilities is that their effectiveness increases the closer you are to maxing out your RP. This talent summons a disembodied copy of your weapon that fights for you, its duration is modified by the RP you currently have. Its duration is 10 seconds, plus 1 extra second for every RP you have.

At this point, we have 51 points in Blood, we’ve taken just enough points to get the 51 point talent. We’ve also taken all the dps-enhancing talents. The remaining talents are tanking or health regen talents that will NOT improve your raid DPS, so we’re going to move on to other trees.

Frost

Improved Icy Touch 3/3 – The first thing we’re going to do is put 3 points in to improve Icy Touch. This talent increases the damage of Icy Touch by 10%/20%/30%. You frost fever then also reduces the affected enemy’s melee and ranged attack speed by 2%/4%/6%.

Glacial Rot 2/2 – Next put 2 points in Glacial Rot to open up the next tier of talents. This talent causes your targets to take 5%/10% more damage from your Icy Touch.

Black Ice 5/5 – Black Ice increases frost damage by 6%/12%/18%/24%/30%. Black Ice got nerfed a while back. It used to affect both Frost and Shadow damage, so it also helped abilities from other trees. Now, it only affects Frost abilities. Glacial Rot and Black Ice are largely wasted points in this build; however fans of this build would say that it’s worth the 7 points to get the next talent.

Annihilation 3/3 – This talent makes all the frost points worth it. Annihilation increases the critical strike chance of all your special abilities by 1%/2%/3%. In addition, Obliterate has a 33%/66%/100% chance to leave your diseases on your target and not consume them. This means that you can use Obliterate multiple times in your dps rotation without having to waste dps reapplying diseases on the target; thus simplifying your rotation.

That’s all for frost, now it’s time to move on and put our final seven points in Unholy.

Unholy

Vicious Strikes 2/2 – This talent increases the critical strike chance of your Plague Strike by 3%/6%, and increases its critical strike damage bonus by 15%/30%.

Morbidity 3/3 – This talent buffs death coil; increasing its damage and healing by 5%/10%/15%. In addition, it cuts in half the cooldown of Death and Decay, reducing it by 5/10/15 seconds.

Epidemic 2/2 – Put your final two points into epidemic. Epidemic is an awesome talent because it increases the duration of Blood Plague and Crypt Fever by 3/6 seconds. Why is this so important you ask? Like Annihilation, this ability simplifies dps rotations, allowing you to pack more high-damage strikes in place of reapplying diseases in the second part of your rotation.

This spec relies heavily on Blood for dps, with support from both Frost and Unholy. I like this build because of the simplified dps rotation, and because of several utility abilities like Mark of Blood, and Hysteria. There is an alternate Blood dps spec that chooses to put more points in Unholy to get the gargoyle instead of DRW as its primary RP Dump; such a spec passes on Annihilation, thereby not wasting those 7 points in Frost.

This Blood spec has a simple dps rotation that’s easy to get the hang of and maintain. It relies heavily on Heart Strike and Obliterate, and uses DRW and Deathcoil as the primary RP Dumps. The rotation is as follows:

Rotation 1:      DUMP ( or )
Rotation 2:      DUMP ( or )

This is my first article in a series of end-game spec articles. As more and more of you hit 80, its time to choose a spec to use for heroics and end-game raiding. This article focuses on retooling our Unholy leveling build for group-oriented activities.

The widely accepted end-game build for Unholy is 17/0/54. As a play style, Unholy focuses on control and enhanced AoE abilities; the reason I chose it as a leveling spec. As a raid spec, Unholy leverages increased disease damage and the MoG ghoul for extra damage. Here are some benefits of Unholy Spec:

Provides Unholy Blight; a powerful AoE ability.

 

Now, lets get down to the talents. The preferred spec is 17/0/54. High damage talents are taken from Unholy, supported by melee damage enhancing talents from the top tiers of Blood. Here's the rundown:

 

  First, take 2 points in Vicious Strike. This wonderful talent increases your critical strike chance by 3%/6% and your critical strike damage bonsu by 15%/30% for Plague Strike, Death Strike, and Scourge Strike. These are essential abilities in your arsenal, not taking this talent would be stupid. This talent offers about 1.28% of your DPS per talent point.




  Place 3 points in Morbidity. This talent increases the damage and healing of Death Coil by 5%/10%/15% and reduces Death and Decay's cooldown by 5/10/15 second. It offers a bodest 0.69% dps per talent point, however you need it to unlock the next tier of talents. Anticipation will not help your dps, so I suggest skipping it if you're not a tank.




  Take 3 points in Virulence. This talent gives you 1%/2%/3% increased chance to hit with spells and has a dispel resistance component. The resistance component screams pvp; however do not underestimate the power of hit.




  Take 3 points in Ravenous Dead. One of the main benefits of this spec is the perma-ghoul. This talent improved his effectiveness; by increasing your overall strength by 1%/2%/3% and increasing the contribution your ghoul gets by 20%/40%/60%.




  Next, please put 2 points into Epidemic. If there were a list of talents that all DK's need to have, Epidemic would be on that list. It's a very important talent. It increases the length of your diseases by 3/6 seconds. Why is that so important you ask? It allows for two full rune refreshes before your diseases need to be applied again. This means, that instead of doing a IT>PS>HS>HS>SS rotation the second time around, you can instead do SS>SS>SS>DC, SS is a two rune ability and affords much more damage than the standard rotation, epidemic makes this second rotation possible. Epidemic offers a dps increase of 4.12%, the highest of any Unholy talent.




  Next, put only 3 points into Necrosis, improving auto-attack damage by 2%/4%/6%. The reason for only 3 points is that Unholy is less-reliant on auto-attacks and more on spells. With a dps increase of 0.63% per point, there are better ways to spend your final points in Unholy.




  Put 3 points into Blood-Caked Blade. This talent gives you a 10%/20%/30% chance per-auto-attack to gain the Blood-Caked Blade effect, which its for 25% of your auto-attack damage plus 12.5% per disease on the current target.




  Please put 1 point into Shadow of Death. This talent buffs your strength and stamina by 2% and allows you to res as a ghoul when you die. I'm not entirely a fan of this ability, I never seem to be able to kill anything and die too fast as a ghoul. However; this talent is a prerequisite for Master of Ghouls, which is a talent that I can't go without.




  Please put 5 points in Inpurity. Impurity increases your spell damage by an additional 5%/10%/15%/20%/25% of your AP. Spell Damage is a focus of Unholy spec, so extra spell damage is money. This is a 1.07% DPS increase per point.




  Please put 2 points into Dirge. This talent allows your Death Strike, Obliterate, Plague Strike and Scourge Strike to generate an addition 2.5/5 rp




  Please put 1 point into Summon Gargoyle. This gives you a gargoyle to bombard your enemies from the air. It is modified by your AP.




  Please put 1 point into Master of Ghouls. There's no point being Unholy and not taking this talent. This talent allows you to control your ghoul and removed the durration on its life. Your ghoul basically becomes a warlock pet. The improved dps and control is critical for your survivability, especially in solo and pvp content.




  Please put 3 points in Reaping. This abilitity is also an important and integral part of Unholy spec. Whenever you hit with your off-spec ability, in this case Blood Strike or Blood Boil, there is a 33%/66%/100% chance that the Blood Rune will regenerate as a Death Rune when its cooldown is up. A Death Rune is a special rune that can be substrituted for any other rune type. With 2 Death Runes replacing your Blood Runes, this allows you to use 3x Scourge Strikes in a row on one rune cooldown.




  Please put 3 points in desecration. This is down from 5 in our leveling spec. As a raider, Desecration isn't as important. Many raid mobs will probably be immune anyways; so we're keeping it for solo purposes, but not putting as many points into it. With 3 points it has a 20%/40%/60% chance of per Plague Strike.




  Next, please put 1 point in Bone Shield. This talent is both mitigation and dps improvement. You get 4 bones and it works kinda like a Shaman Shield. While you have at least 1 bone up, you take 40% less damage, and deal 2% more damage. Each time your hit, you lose a bone. You can also get a Major Glyph to increase your total bones by 1. It may not sound like a lot, but its the third highest dps increases per talent point in the Unholy tree; take it.




  Please put two points in Unholy aura, this talent gives your entire raid an un-mounted 15% speed boost. While not directly affacting dps, it does have an indirect buff by allowing your raid members to move faster between targets. You may be inclined to skip this one, but we'd suggest taking it. If your unconvinved, look it up on the forums.




  Please put 3 points into Crypt Feaver. This talent gives a 10%/20%/30% chance that your diseases will also cause Crypt Feaver, which is an additional disease and will increase any of your abilities that depend on having diseases applied; like Blood Strike, Obliterate, or Scourge Strike.




  Please put 1 point in Scourge Strike. This ability is Unholy's iconic strike, each DK spec has one (Heart Strike, Frost Strike, Scourge Strike). Unholy Spec is pointless without taking it. Scourge Strike is a 2-rune ability, dealing more damage than your normal attacks.




  Please put 3 points in Ebon Plaguebringer. This is the grand-daddy at the bottom of the tree. It is the second most powerful talent per point spent. Each point increases dps by 3.09%. It increases the magical damage taken by the target by 4%/9%/13% and improves your overall critical strike chance by 1%/2%/3%. Don't skip this one.




  Put 3 points into Wandering Plague. This talent gives you a chance equal to your melee critical strike chance for your diseases to cause 100% additional damage to your target and any surrounding targets. This ability DOES NOT affect CC'd targets, and is a 1.9% dps buff per point.




  Put 5 points into Rage of Rivendare. This talent cuases you to deal 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% more damage to targets affected by Blood Plague. In addition, it grants 1/2/3/4/5 expertise rating. This is an increase of 1.37% per talent point. The dps increases is pretty high, I don't suggest skipping it.




  Put 1 point in Unholy Blight, this is the lowest tier talent. It gives you an AoE insect attack that deals 48 shadow damage a second for 20 seconds to all enemies within 10 yrds of you. Add this to Death and Decay and Blood Boil and you have a pretty massive AoE arsenal. This talent point is definitely well invested.




  Now we're done in Unholy, lets pick up some Blood talents for melee utility. Put 3 points into Subversion. This increases the critical strike chance of Blood Strike, Heart Strike, and Obliterate by 3%/6%/9%. This talent also has a threat reducing component which reduces overall threat by 8%/16%/25% while in Blood and Unholy Presence. This is another talent that I'd think a DPS DK would be stupid not to take.




  Next, but 2 points into Butchery, this generates 10/20 rp by killing an enemy, but also gives you 1/2 rp generation while in combat.




  Put 2 points into Two-Handed Weapon Specialization. The benefit of this talent is obvious. It increases the damage you deal with two-hand weapons by 2%/4%. Two-handers are the way to go for dps. If you want to duel-wield like a sissy 12-year old, reroll fury warrior or rogue.




  Next, put 5 points into Bladed Armor. I'm not to fond of this talent. It's another armor to AP conversion talent like other tank classes have. However its a better choice than Scent of Blood or Blade Barrier for getting to Dark Conviction.




  Finally, put your last 5 points into Dark Conviction. This talent increases your overall critical strike chance by 1%/2%/3%/4%/5% for a total 2.91% dps increases.

About the Author

Xeeon is a Death Knight badass and the author of our Death Knight Tactics column. He's been playing World of Warcraft since the beginning and is the master of the new Death Knight class. Xeeon and Torbin are the same person, but you didn't hear that from us. You can contact Xeeon at > Xeeon@deathknighttactics.com.

0 Comments  //  Leave A Comment  //  Topics: Death Knight, Specs

The expansion is right around the corner; so I’ve busied myself with coming up with a leveling spec for Xeeon. It looks like the way to go for leveling is Unholy. I was torn between Frost and Unholy because it seems that both offer a good deal of control and AoE utility. My decision to go with Unholy for level was based on talents like Shadow of Death and Master of Ghouls, the latter of which basically turns your ghoul into the equivalent of a warlock pet.

I have never been a fan of raiding with a pet class, but for our leveling purposes, this will do nicely. Think about it, which are the easiest classes to solo …. Hunter … warlock. The pet ghoul will be a huge advantage.

Another key talent of my leveling build is Bone Shield. This useful ability drops overall damage taken, while increasing damage output. Bone Shield operates a lot like a shaman shield. It has 4 charges, each time you’re hit, you lose a charge.

I also decided to grab Ebon Plaguebringer and Scourge Strike. The “strike” abilities are pretty much critical to the damage of whatever build you choose. There’s a different strike at the bottom of each tree (Heart Strike, Frost Strike, Scourge Strike). Ebon Plaguebringer is an upgrade to Crypt Fever, it increases the magic damage taken by the target; as a secondary effect, it increases your critical strike chance against that target … sounds pretty nifty to me.

I’m not planning on keeping Unholy as my raiding build, but we’ll see how the numbers stack up when I finally make it to 80. I’d like to go Frost DPS, but last time I checked, its damage didn’t quite measure up to Blood.